


Hunt

by Croik



Category: The Perfection (2019)
Genre: Ableism, F/F, Past Sexual Abuse, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:34:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21948133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Croik/pseuds/Croik
Summary: Charlotte and Lizzie have only one calling now.
Relationships: Elizabeth "Lizzie" Wells/Charlotte Willmore
Comments: 7
Kudos: 39
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Hunt

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rivine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rivine/gifts).



Charlotte and Lizzie step out on stage together, and the audience holds its breath. They’ve come to see the monsters.

A limited engagement, the marketing said. Charlotte and Elizabeth, prodigies of their time, their careers cut tragically short--much like their arms. Together now, about to perform a duet the likes of which the Royal Festival Hall had never heard nor seen. They glide beneath the warm, yellow lights, each dressed in the same patchwork dress of white and gold. As they come together where the cello and stools await them, the jagged seams make a mess of the boundary between their bodies, and the audience members lean forward in their seats. They’ve come to _see_. But the pair takes their seats, and their deformities are hidden from greedy eyes. All that’s left for their sick fascination to partake in is the beautiful, two-headed beast draped in glitter and metal, reaching for the instrument.

In the audience, among those sweating anxiously for a look at the stumps, sits Hans Yaegerman. He’ll be dead before dawn.

Lizzie spots him first, and her breath catches. If not for instinct matching her movements to Charlotte’s, she might have been paralyzed by the sight of his deep-set, grime-green eyes. His hair is longer than she remembers, combed over and gray at the temples, but those eyes haven’t changed since the last time she performed for him, and she feels them clawing across her fingers as she reaches for the neck.

In four hours, her fingers will be around _his_ neck. She’ll dig her knee into his sternum and her knuckles into his throat until his face turns purple. 

Charlotte puts bow to strings, and the cello begins to play. The first notes are slow, almost painfully so. They ripple outward like thunderclouds over the packed auditorium. It’s how any good hunt should start: with anticipation, for what the prey does not yet know. Each rising note incites the imagination, camouflaging what ought to be caution with excitement. By the time Hans realizes that he _is_ prey, it will be too late.

Gradually, the piece they’ve composed begins to transcend. The hollow belly of the cello becomes a throat and starts to sing, melodious and deep, rising and falling. It tells a tale of two discordant souls twisting about each other, aching staccatos punctuating the macabre beats of a terrifying union. Charlotte is the strength, working the bow back and forth with force and precision, driving them onward; Lizzie is the catalyst that gives them form, that shapes the passion into harmony. They haven’t done this enough yet for it to be true perfection, but that isn’t what either is seeking. Their art is messy and vibrant and all-consuming, a tale of horrors suffered and further horrors to be bestowed, each by a beast with two backs.

Lizzie feels the vibration of each string rising up through her knuckles and into the delicate bones of her wrist. The filiments are as vocal cords beneath her fingers, soon to be twisted up in her clawing grip as Hans Yagerman spits his last bloody utterings across the flowing collar of her dress. Charlotte saws the bow, her movements growing faster, slicing harder, in preparation for the ragged blade that will split him apart at every joint. Then, if he’s lucky, at the neck that Lizzie has so lovingly tenderized for her. His body will twitch and bleed out from every office and empty limb socket, his eyes will pop like overripe fruit and his hands--his gnarled, sinful, nauseating hands will be peeled clean layer by layer. From his pegbox to his tailgut Hans Yaegerman, orchestral offianado and oft-overlooked predator, will be disassembled into meat and blood and maybe a little bone. 

Lizzie can see it so clearly, and her eagerness for it borders on rapture with such potency that her fingers curl, and her nail scrapes against the catgut. The cello lets slip the tiniest sound of provocation that sets the audience’s teeth on edge. What a pity, some of them will think later. How admirably they performed despite their conditions, how tragic it is for it to have set their talent askew. But as Hans suffers and dies beneath their hands and blades, he will think back on this moment, and know with certainty that this is the warning he should have heeded, when the monster declared for all to hear that his pathetic stumblings across a cruel planet were very soon to end.

The duet concludes with a rush of adrenaline, notes colliding and shifting and metastasizing, until reaching that final, glorious crescendo. Charlotte and Lizzie strike the final chord together and look to each other, breath hard and heady, as the audience showers them with applause. What brave girls, each will say. How skilled and how driven they must be, to continue on as they are. They will probably inform every one who asks about the performance of every missed note or unscripted change of pace. They will certainly spend a few awkward moments trying not to ask each other who had seen the stumps. Why else does one seek the company of monsters, if not to better themselves in the association? If only they had more time, Lizzie would see each as a corpse at her feet, but for now she will content herself with one.

Charlotte and Lizzie step back upstage. They stay close together, leaving their instrument behind, unwilling to break the optical illusion of their bodies joined as one. As the stage hands prepare for the next performers, they slip away into privacy to join even more so, mouths seeking mouths, dresses hiked and fingers plying. Their sweat is the same and their moans and whimpers a second duet. Their hunger sets the tempo, and when they’re finished, they rejoin their assembled peers, to smile and charm as they lay in wait for Hans Yaegerman to retire for the evening. Not once do they leave each other’s side.

Because they are now only one creature, with a singular goal: to hunt. And there are so many who deserve to cross their path.


End file.
